* Posts by Lui-g

19 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Mar 2010

Reg man builds smart home rig, gains SUPREME CONTROL of DOMAIN – Pics

Lui-g

..and soon will do heating control too!

I coincidently only discovered LightwaveRF just one week ago, and I've already scattered wall sockets & remote units, throughout the house. It just seems to work, which is more than can be said for most tech. Even the wife approves!

Mind you, not super cheap, as the prices quickly add up, but between the "Siemmens" range at B& Q, and the lightwave RF at Amazon & Maplin, you can get some good deals.

Most interesting is that very soon (supposedly May/June '14) they are adding radiator valves, remote boiler switches & remote thermostatic switches! This makes it all much more interesting. So ONE system could control the lot: lights, plugs & heating.

In my limited experience, the official App (Android/iOS) is OK so far, but there's room for improvement - unusually, the Android App is almost exactly the same as its iOS counterpart.

Researcher names world's favourite smartphone

Lui-g
Facepalm

Depends on your hand/pocket size - it's perfect for me.

The big downside with the S3 is that the screen glass & LCD are glued together - a cracked screen cost me near £200 to fix!

At least with the iPhones you can just replace the glass...

Fans rap Apple's 'crap' Map app

Lui-g
Thumb Down

Re: Shockingly bad.

I'm just like you - throughout the betas I assumed they hadn't switched on the UK satellite imagery to save on some licensing fees until the launch.

Interestingly, using "Find my iPhone" on iCloud.com, the satellite imagery for where I live (Brighton, UK) has the expected detail. So Apple do have access to the images, they just haven't made them available on their mobile devices.

It's the first time I'm recommending EVERYONE I KNOW to hold off on an iOS update as it's more of a downgrade where maps are concerned.

Thank the heavens I also have an Android phone (S3) - I ended up getting one to explicitly to use the Google services which I particularly like - also, any respectable geek should own at least a couple of devices from the top players.

Now, Google, where's that Google Maps iOS app already?

Apple 15in MacBook Pro with Retina Display

Lui-g
Thumb Up

Re: MagSafe2 - there is an adapter

Well spotted - and it doesn't cost $25 either!

Also, it was mentioned on the keynote that the magsafe had to be shrunk to be able to fit on the new machine - that's why magsafe 2 was made.

Apple pulls in TomTom, kicks Google off iPhones

Lui-g

Re: Street View.

Street view is gone form the built-in map app.

Google recently announced their own 3D maps, and that they would be bringing these to iOS.

The issue will be if Apple approves a Google Maps app or not...

Hands on with the Apple iPad 3

Lui-g

For £329 it's arguably great value, a talking point, and presses enough on the competition.

I don't think they have a problem with volume shifting - these will sell fine - and if the iPad 2 was £279 or even £300, they would sell less "the new iPad"s which would not make any sense. By making it close, they make more money on iPad 2 sales as well as push those who can afford it to the latest and greatest (, and don't annoy existing iPad2 owners too much; and don't set a precedent big price drop on previous generation gear that would cause people to always wait for the next generation before buying).

It's all very clever and, whilst the magic still works, very lucrative.

It worked for me - my the new iPad which will replace the original iPad is pre-ordered.

Sony Ericsson LiveView remote phone viewer

Lui-g
FAIL

Got this for Xmas

.... after telling my wife about it.

The random connection problems are an issue but it has many major flaws:

#1: whilst it is great that it has a find my phone feature, over xmas, I was hoping for a "find my LiveView" feature as the unit pops off the wristband far too easily. And no, you can't glue it on, as it needs to pop off the wristband in order for the charging usb port to be accessible. Thus, since you charge it rather often (more on that in #2), the unit needs to be removed and put in place, which means it becomes even more likely to jump off the wristband...

#2: maybe it's a side effect of having to attempt to connect an fail so often, but the battery life was closer to a single day than anything, often far less than that.

#3: the unit reset many times, after which you'll not have a working clock until you get reconnect. It would reset sometimes spontaneously, sometimes when I powered it on to tell the time. Other times I'd have to reset it to see if it would connect or not... Often the battery would die before I managed a reconnection.

The three above issues are quite problematic, and make this feel like a prototype/experiment product that was rushed out to cash in on the Xmas sales - before much testing was done.

Having spent most of the xmas break wearing a non-functional device (dead battery), or a pointless device (couldn't connect after a reset so could not tell the time), or wearing just the wristband whilst retracing my steps to find where the little black square had gone to, I wasn't impressed. Then, after an LiveView app update was pushed to the market, the new Liveview client on my up-to-date, non-rooted & factory unlocked HTC Desire phone (supposedly one of the few supported devices), it worked perfectly from one glorious evening! (This was unfortunately after Xmas, after my family got to see their 'tech guru' show off his latest innovation that doesn't function (last year I had an Archos 5IT which after an OTA update decided to not connect to any wifi network - &*%!). That device got working after a few tweaks and updates, but it lives in a drawer and will be recycled soon enough.

So, back to the LiveView - it was WORKING !!! - I was living the dream finally! I got a call notification, then later a gmail notification and even read most of the email on my wrist. All the while I was able to tell the time whenever I wanted without taking my phone out of my pocket - I've not worn a wrist watch this century. Fantastic.

Alas, the next morning, the power button (one of only two buttons on the unit) stopped working rendering the unit completely useless.

It's being repaired at the moment by SE.

I love it, but it needs stability and a redesigned strap. At least it wasn't crazy expensive.

I'd recommend waiting for the next generation, or at the very least until a proper firmware update is released.

Meltdown ahoy!: Net king returns to save the interwebs

Lui-g

That's just not going to work...

"That download could be on a local router or the smartphone of the guy sitting next to you on a plane."

I agree with the concept, but only down to an ISP level - not a device level.

Otherwise we'd all become content peers for anything we've seen... and I can see a number of problems with that:

Bandwidth (your device becoems a server for all other people around you who want the same content)

Privacy - since it will be designed to be shared out, it will undoubtedly be possible to see what content you've seen - more easily and discreetly than ever before (since the network activity would not be suspicious in a peer environment).

We definitely need a solution, but it should be far easier for ISPs to cache popular content (which they must do already) than to change every device on the planet so they can become servers too.

One day, when devices have battery life in months or years, and bandwidth isn'a an issue, then sure. But I think it may be a while yet. Maybe I'm not looking far enough in the big picture...

Regent Street blocked by iPad fanboi swarm

Lui-g

Why not pre-order?

Why queue?

Why not pre-order?

iPad is SO yesterday.

Surely a true fanboy would have known about the pre-order date, and have been saving up for the magical device for at least 4 years.